Erin Cummings: Author and Yoga Studio Owner
I’m so excited to kick-off the Wise Women Working blog with my sister-in-law, Erin Cummings. To me, Erin is an amazing mother, a spectacular cook, and one of my most stylish friends. To the rest of the world she’s an entrepreneur who is building an empire through setting intentions in her daily life.
YESyoga
“I knew I wanted to open a studio when I was getting trained to become a yoga teacher.”
Erin started her first business, stand up paddle board yoga, in 2015 after she completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training. As fun as stand-up paddle board yoga sounds, it is a lot of manual work for the person running it. In Erin’s case, she had 11 paddle boards that she had to drive to the lake in a trailer, unload, anchor, teach yoga on, then un-anchor, and reload for every single class. Eventually Erin sold the business and decided it was time to open her own studio.
By January of 2018, Erin and her co-founder launched a digital platform of YESyoga and the studio opened in October of that year. She feels the biggest success of the studio is all of the people who love the studio. They have members who drive 40-minutes to take classes each day and another member who visits a friend in December each year and always goes to classes at the studio while he’s in town.
Erin also loves being able to use her creativity with the studio.
“I feel like we're on YESyoga version like 107 and my favorite part is just the constant change to make it really what I want and that's creating this more lifestyle branded studio.”
When it comes to challenges as a business owner, Erin says it’s “surviving the mental load that is entrepreneurship.” She explains that when COVID hit that’s when her co-founder decided to move on and then her dad was in a motorcycle accident, the year prior. She went from having 50% of responsibility for the studio to having 100%, but she’s happy to be where she is today.
Erin’s advice to other women who are thinking about starting their own business is to, “DO IT!!!”
“Stop trying to impress people who don't give a shit about you and do what you want for yourself. You have to focus on yourself and then you are the only person that stands in your way.”
The Possibility Project
“For me, the focus of the book is a lot of reflecting and that's what I do in my life. I ask myself, ‘What am I really struggling with?’ and ‘Where do I really need to ask for help?’ and ‘Where is it just me all up in my bullshit?’ I think that is a big thing people can learn about - it’s not necessarily who you are and what you value but where do you constantly trip yourself up on purpose?”
“The thing that I honestly find so interesting about this whole process is that the journal that I initially made for the yoga studio looks so similar to The Possibility Project. It just has a lot more personality because of the colors and contrast, but it’s a lot like when I created it the first time.”
Writing The Possibility Project made Erin realize that she wants to do more than own a Yoga Studio.
“I think I'm really known for that, and that's great, but I think there's so much more opportunity for me. I don't know what it is yet, but I really feel like there's this big open space somewhere over here that my intention needs to be turned towards, but I'm still figuring that out.”
Advice for Women
“My biggest advice as a mom, business owner, partner, author, philanthropist, whatever you want to call me, is that you can’t actually do it all. At some point you have to give something up and whether it’s going to the grocery store or putting your kid in child care or hiring someone to clean your house or getting office space - you cannot do it all and you need help.”
Erin says there are some weeks she doesn’t get to see her kids as much as she wants and there are other weeks where she isn’t at work as much as she would like to be, but you have to get out of your own head about what the perfect balance is supposed to be because there isn’t one.
“Going back to the book: If you continue working on what you want to work on, and what you're good at working on, and what's already working in your life, and getting rid of all that other stuff, so many more opportunities are going to open up just because you worked on all this stuff, and not because you got the best sweet potato at the grocery store.”